Simon Crust
Editorial Contributor
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2005
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I totally disagree about the action but I'm specifically talking about the fight scenes. I've grown up with proper action films and Hong Kong has been doing this for over 30 years. The action in this film reminds me of the Red Room scene from TLJ that a lot of people rave about. I watched that scene and I knew it was awful because of my history but I couldn't articulate it. Then I watched a stunt coordinator break down the scene and I understood that Daisy was off time causing the stunt actors to wait and pretend to be busy doing nothing. A common problem in fight films.Really disappointed in this one and not because it's bad. No, it's... mediocre. There's flashes of brilliance scattered here and there but it felt like a jarring mess at the end with so much potential left unused. There's a ton of small things but three stuck out:
1) For a movie called "Birds of Prey" there's not much time spent with the Birds! All of that group are interesting characters (Huntress pretty much steals every scene she's in despite the, uh, odd look they went for) and more time on them and less on Harley would have gone a long way to delivering something new.
2) The action. Now to be clear there's some REALLY good stuff here and the Wick influence is clear and often impressive. But for some weird reason they decide to go slow-mo for the show stopping moments which rather defeats the object! The reason that Wick fighting style works is you have the 'wait... did that REALLY just happen' jaw-on-floor moments that make you go buy the UHD and watch it a dozen times over. If we see everything in slow mo it's like showing the audience how the magic trick is done.
3) It's... well, it's set in Gotham. And here we have the problem with a shared universe. This is very clearly Gotham, the Bat exists and this Harley has run into him before. The last third of the movie is a big enough gang war to star in an Arkham game yet there isn't any sighting or even concern from the bad guys that it may attract the Terror that Flaps in the Night! Uh, you may have gathered by the Darkwing reference I don't actually *want* Batman to show up here, way overexposed at this point, but ignoring him completely is a major 'wait...what' moment. Just have a news report about the Justice League being off planet or something, can be a throwaway background moment but cover it off.
While it's not particularly fair it doesn't help that this came out right around the Harley Quinn animated show which has taken many of the same building blocks and created a far more intriguing and interesting offering.
but the final fight scene when she's tottering about on skates swinging a hammer like an 8 year old at the fair. It just looked.... Vaguely pathetic?
in the DC universe cartoon, she's very 'anti-hero' (to the point of being simply not the worst in a bad bunch lol). But the writing is so good you can still empathise even if you don't quite sympathise with her.HQ was one of the better characters in suicide squad but here she had me on the side of the people trying to kill her. Unlike flawed characters and anti hero's she had no redeeming qualities.
She acts like a dick and then breaks the guys legs sitting in the chair who complains. They might have history but not clear at that point in the film.
She then complains that she could do what she wanted when she had the Joker's protection and destroys a factory on a whim.
It's all well and good laying down the badass credentials but they did nothing to balance the scales.
Police station looked good but a building full of armed police and no-one got a shot off.
The god awful fight scene at the end, if it was a fight against the teletubbies at the end, my money is on Tinky Winky.
I think this line of Simon's review pretty much covers it.
It’s not that it’s a particularly bad film, but it’s not particularly good either; there are good ideas and it looks great, but it is so flimsy and desperately wants to be tough (load it with swearing shall we?) that it simply feels out-dated.
It does have some great ideas and I really did like the intro. But if you are going to have an action comedy then there needs to be some decent action. I know they belatedly brought in Stahelski but it was too little too late. It was nowhere near as bad as its own marketing made it out to be, there was very little actual defeating "the patriarchy" nonsense. But it cost them. Very few men went to see this film but what's hilarious is that even fewer women bothered to turn up.
Poor direction, bad costumes (why is Huntress wearing a black rubbish bag?) and action scenes which did NOT make them look like badasses, just bad. There was a good film in there trying to get out. For anyone who wants to see Harley done properly, watch the DC Universe animation. It's so good that I didn't mind too much the (not so subtle) dig at Fandom Menace.
5.5/10
You hit the nail on the head. DC for some reason seem to keep tripping up on a lot of their films although I enjoyed man of Steel, batman vs superman, wonder woman and aquaman. MCU made design changes to characters such as hawkeye etc to avoid looking like a pantomime convension.in the DC universe cartoon, she's very 'anti-hero' (to the point of being simply not the worst in a bad bunch lol). But the writing is so good you can still empathise even if you don't quite sympathise with her.
I lurve Man of Steel (unpopular opinion but I do), Aquaman & Wonder Woman are great, Justice League is no Avengers but I still enjoyed it. I was so pleasantly surprised by Shazam that I didn't sell my disc. If I left any films out, trust me it's better that way lol. I say this just to show that even though I think Marvel is obviously the better product, I'm not a DC hater.You hit the nail on the head. DC for some reason seem to keep tripping up on a lot of their films although I enjoyed man of Steel, batman vs superman, wonder woman and aquaman. MCU made design changes to characters such as hawkeye etc to avoid looking like a pantomime convension.
DC have a lot of questionable CGI on their films, take de-aged temura Morrison on in Aquaman vs say Samuel Jackson in captain marvel, or Steppenwolf and let's try and forget moustashgate.
I think I’m the only one who enjoyed this.
it was a no brainer action film and for once wasn’t just made to build up to something else but an actual stand alone movie.
Add me to the I enjoyed it list. It was a fun comic book movie with some genuinely funny moments, the guy with the beard cracked me up.I think I’m the only one who enjoyed this.
it was a no brainer action film and for once wasn’t just made to build up to something else but an actual stand alone movie.
???This definitely had better audio than Bad Boys for Life but gets a 9/10 where BBfL got 10/10.